


Where Did All The Candy Go?

by misqueme



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rated for Swearing and Depressing Thoughts, slaps roof of fanfic, this bad boy can fit so much self projection in it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 04:34:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18865804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misqueme/pseuds/misqueme
Summary: Alternatively titled: It May Be Canon That Karkat Has Panic Attacks, But It’s Not Canon For Dave, So I’m Just Going To Project My Own Very Obscure Issues Onto Dave Because It Makes Sense For His Personality.With a side of Davekat ;)





	Where Did All The Candy Go?

**Author's Note:**

> Just finished Homestuck and I love Davekat

“WHERE’S MY FIRE CANDY?” Karkat shouts, slamming the pantry door shut. This is infuriating. That’s his FAVORITE type of candy. And now it’s gone. And he knows, for a fact, that nobody else on this stupid meteor likes the candy which mean whoever took it did it with THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF PISSING HIM OFF.

The troll boy fumes as he stomps out of the kitchen, remembering for a minute the time he’d made the human kids try his candy.

He’d bugged them about it forever, calling them wimps, and culturally insensitive, and waving the bag in their faces before Rose FINALLY agreed to try a piece, and so did Dave.

The result was Rose carrying a bottle full of ice around with her all day to nurse her injuries, and Dave had fallen to the floor with his hand over his mouth, yelling about how Karkat had tried to poison him. Karkat thinks that Dave might have actually been crying under the sunglasses, considering how he kept rubbing his eyes afterward. 

What a hilarious prank. Neither of them accepted food from him ever again, which was too bad.

Thinking about that makes Karkat feel a little better, but his CANDY IS STILL MISSING.

“KANAYA!” Karkat screams, kicking at her bedroom door. It opens, and the troll girl leans out with a calm look that contrasts Karkat’s rage. 

“Yes?”

“Do you know where my fire candy is?” He seethes.

“No,” she answers, and shuts the door again. Karkat growls and moves on, asking anyone he runs into if they’d seen his candy.

Nobody had.

“ARRRRRGH,” Karkat yells as he stomps back into the common room, “this is so FRUSTRATING.”

“What is?” Asks someone from the couch, and Karkat freezes. Dave is sitting there, comfortably lounging across the whole piece of furniture like he owns it.

And in his hand is a bag of candy.

“WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GET THAT?!” Karkat screeches. Dave, fully used to the volume, glances down at his snacking choice.

“Uh, the pantry. Was... I not supposed to have any?”

“Well,” snaps Karkat, “it’s not like that’s the only type of candy in the whole pantry that I expressively alchemize MYSELF, with the sole purpose of eating MYSELF, the only person on this entire piece of floating space rock who actually enjoys the stuff being MYSELF.”

Dave winces and rubs his neck. “Aw, I’m sorry, dude. I, uh... here.” He sits up and places the bag in Karkat’s hands over the back of the couch. It’s still mostly full. “Sorry about that.”

Dave stands up, stretches, and starts walking out.

“... I though you hated fire candy?” Karkat says quietly.

Dave simply shrugs and keeps going.

Karkat watches him. “Well, uh, if you ever want any, I guess you can have some, if you can somehow manage to not devour the whole damn bag.”

Dave pauses for a second. 

“Will do,” he says, and then he’s out the door.

Karkat glances down again at the bag of candy in his hands, and pops one of the little red bits in his mouth. Rose has compared the taste to something she called “cinnamon”. The bite and spice and flame travels from his tongue to most of his head quickly, and he grins. Trolls have a much higher pain tolerance then humans. And apparently so does Dave?

Karkat shrugs. It’s not his business what Dave develops a taste for, even if it is a very strange one eighty.

 

————

 

There’s a knock at his door, and Karkat growls, rolling over in bed.

The knock becomes more urgent and the troll boy reluctantly stands up, dragging his body over to the door.

“Yesss?” Karkat blinks blearily. “You better have a good reason for this shit.”

Standing in the hallway is Dave. The human cocks his head and wrings his hands a little.

“We’re out of fire candy.”

Karkat stares at him. “Are you shitting me right now?”

“No! We are!”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant, how in the ever living reign of Troll Will Smith did you think THAT was a good reason to force me out of my bed, you insensitive ass?”

Dave’s sunglasses give away nothing as he simply continues standing there.

“Can we please get more? Or can you teach me how to make them?”

Karkat stands in his doorway for a few extra seconds, his think pan running a little slow. “You’re serious.”

Dave nods.

Karkat brings his arms up to his face and rubs his eyes with his fingers gently. 

“Okay. Okay. I’ll help make you some goddamn candy.”

Dave nods and moves to the side so that Karkat can walk out. They both trudge to the alchemy room. Well, Karkat trudges, Dave is just walking in complete silence.

Karkat pushes all the correct buttons and combines the right ingredients, making sure to show Dave what to choose. When he’s done, he has exactly one bag of Alternian fire candy, and hands it to Dave.

“You can keep this one,” he mumbles, “I don’t need it.”

“... Oh,” Dave says, and looks down at the bag in his palms. “Thanks.”

And then he opens it, grabs three pieces of candy, and drops them into his open mouth.

Karkat chokes. “Three? Dude, what is wrong with you?!”

Predictably, Dave shrugs.

So Karkat sighs and decides to just go back to bed and forget anything that just happened, because it was so far beyond what he was willing to deal with.

And as Karkat fell into the bed in his room, he tried to imagine what kind of dumbass maniac would put three candies in his mouth at once.

 

———

 

Karkat lounges on the couch, except he’s not “lounging”, he’s sitting on it properly like someone who actually knows what they’re doing with their lives.

He really should be asleep by now. Since there was no such concept of Night and Day on the meteor, everyone had fallen into a routine of waking up whenever someone made food. And once they’d all started sleeping, it happened to be more or less around the same time every day.

Needless to say, right now was one of those times where everyone should definitely be asleep. But Karkat has started this movie, and he intends to watch it all the way through, thank you very much.

He’d forgotten how long some of the troll movies were, after being forced to watch so many of Rose and Dave’s favorite idiotic human flicks.

When the music finally stops and his laptop screen fades to black, Karkat Vantas stands up and pops his back, feeling very satisfied.

He scoops up his blankets and electronics, prepared to carry them back to his bedroom, when he hears a noise.

A familiar noise, actually.

The noise of somebody accidentally tipping over a soap container and then swearing softly under their breath.

Karkat, rolling his eyes, decides to go over to the bathroom and chew out whoever is awake at this time of night (but not himself because he had a VERY GOOD REASON).

And as he pushes open the bathroom door, he’s greeted with the sight of none other then Dave Strider, laying on his back on the floor in his god tier pajamas and chewing softly on something.

Even as Karkat watches, the human teen reaches into a bag at his side, and pulls out a HANDFUL OF FIRE CANDY, before dumping the mess in his mouth and resuming chewing.

Karkat stares at him, jaw slack. He can’t even summon up the words to explain how absurd this is.

“I can’t EVEN SUMMON UP the words to explain HOW ABSURD THIS IS,” Karkat says, and Dave flinches extremely hard, almost backing away. His eyes must have been closed and he didn’t realize anyone was here.Even still, he continues chewing, the— tear tracks?! Karkat realizes that Dave has been crying, IS crying, that water is streaming down his face— keep flowing.

Karkat drops to his knees, setting his laptop and blankets aside.

“What in type of fresh horse shit that comes out of infected intestines are you doing?!” He hisses, teaching forward. He’s worried. He’s really worried right now.

Dave watches him, hand over his heart from the jump scare, his expression unreadable behind the shades. Eventually, he responds.

“... ‘M just chillin’ out in this here bathroom, eating some nice af candy. It’s pretty great.”

The tears still pouring down his pale face beg to differ.

“Did you just acronym ‘as fuck’ in real life conversation?” Karkat whispers instead. He’s not sure why he’s whispering.

“Yep,” Dave agrees, nodding. “It’s meant to be ironic. You wouldn’t get it, Karkat, I’m so totes in the zone with all this irony biz right now—“

Karkat reaches forward and pressed his hands to both of Dave’s temples. He stops talking instantly, paralyzed by the physical touch and the odd sensation.

As gently as possible, Karkat slowly pulls off the sunglasses. Dave blinks a few times, confused by the light suddenly assaulting him, and shocked that Karkat just invaded his space like that.

Karkat has only seen Dave without shades once before, when he’d been having a particularly bad panic attack and the Strider had attempted to calm him down. He’d pulled off the eyeware, pointed to his ruby irises, and said “Look, Kar, it ain’t so bad. We can be genetically messed up together, alright?” And Karkat had cried for another ten minutes, but in a much different way.

He’s still struck, even now, by how vulnerable the boy looks without his trademark glasses. His face is so young and soft and open, and Karkat presses one of his hands to Dave’s cheek, realizing what he’s doing too late.

“This is not ironic,” Karkat whispers, glancing pointedly at the candy bag. “Please, please tell me what’s going on. Or I’ll kick your ass so hard your vertebrae will pop out your mouth one by one like a GEZ dispenser.”

Dave huffs a small laugh, his ruby red eyes finally looking straight at the troll. Tears and still trickling down, albeit slower, and his face is puffy and red.

“I, uh... I don’t actually like fire candy.”

Karkat just blinks in confusion. 

“It’s just that...” Dave looks down, once again refusing to meet Karkat’s gaze. “It. ...How do I explain this? You see, I have trouble with feelings.”

Karkat almost snorted at that abrupt and cliche topic change, but recognized a serious moment. Instead he scoots over to sit next to Dave as he starts hugging his knees.

“I’ve sorta... taught myself? Been conditioned to? Not really... show or feel emotion.” Dave picks at the concrete in the bathroom tile. “It’s kind of to the point where I don’t feel like I have emotion. Just... thoughts. And I try to understand them... get all psychological on myself... but I don’t actually know what I’m doing.”

Dave rubs his face roughly, curling in slightly to Karkat. “So I just do what I think I’m supposed to. I base all my actions off dumb stories of people I look up to, and that’s it. If someone needs help, I help them. I stand up to bad people. All that cool dude shit. But I don’t know what I actually WANT to do.”

Karkat chews on his lip, not exactly understanding, but trying to listen.

“Basically... I don’t know WHY I eat the stupid candy. It just... hurt so bad. And I was like, ‘hey, this would make me more interesting. To be dark and tormented’. So I did it. Do it. And, strangely, in some sadistic way, I love it. I love how much it hurts. It’s like I’m actually feeling something. I’m not even sure I’m NOT dark and tormented.”

And the tears are streaming freshly down his cheeks, and Karkat has no idea what to do, so he just wraps Dave up in his arms and squeezes.

“You know that I suck at feelings and shit,” Karkat starts, and smiles when he gets Dave to laugh a little. “But I’m really sorry. I guess... if you actually like the candy... you can have it. But if you’re really doing just because it feels bad... that’s a really fucked up way of doing self harm, dude.”

Dave laughs for real, pressing his face into Karkat’s shirt and getting it wet.

“Can you imagine? Suicide by candy?”

And they’re laughing, and snorting, and being stupid and it’s wonderful.

And then Dave has his arms wrapped around Karkat’s chest and the troll feels his face flushing up a little, as he cuddles him back.

And they lay like that for a moment, having sat in Karkat’s blanket, and just listen to each other’s breathing.

After a while, Karkat says something.

“Hey, Dave?” He whispers. 

“Mmm?” Dave responds, tilting his head up to show Karkat his ruby eyes.

Karkat leans forward and presses a kiss to each of Dave’s eyelids, relishing the little gasp he earns. He rests his forehead against the other teens’ carefully, still hugging him.

“You’re a person. I don’t care what you think, you do have things going on in there that aren’t just made up.” Karkat lowers his voice even more, bumping their noses together. “And people make themselves feel more interesting all the time, without beating themselves up about it. You’re a really cool dude, Dave. Just don’t tell anyone I said that or you’ll be kicked in the mouth so hard teeth will be coming out of your ass.”

Dave starts laughing, and they’re both rocking each other back and forth on the bathroom floor.

Because even if they don’t know what the hell is going on, or how they’re feeling, and only slightly what they’re thinking— they still have each other.

And for now, that will have to do.

 

 

~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to my Moirail, who had to help me with a situation very similar to Dave’s.  
> Love, I’m sorry I always interpret my brain based on fanfics I’ve read and make a lot of stuff up.
> 
> Eating spicy candy is not the worst thing you can do to yourself, but the mindset it stems from is probably unhealthy??  
> What do I know? As mentioned by Dave, everything he/I know about Psychology comes from my most recent book.
> 
> Kudos and comments really make my day so please leave some!! <3


End file.
